Pages

20120830

A few months ago I stumbled upon Krysten's wonderful blog Why Girls Are Weird and before I knew it I was coming back week after week to learn more about her. A few weeks ago she posted about a Blogging Besties Swap. It started with a personality test and I was matched with Elizabeth of E is Random She loves to read and travel (like me) and loves anything peanut butter and chocolate (another similarity) she likes deep jewel toned colors and shoes (who doesn't) and she is afraid of spiders.. (kill them all! says the insectophobic) oh and she's a first born :)

Now that the introductions had been made we were to put together a package of goodies for each other.. here are a few sneak peeks of what I'm sending her.. can't give too much away, wouldn't want to ruin the surprise..

I may have gone bit heavy on the blue!? Plus I forgot to take a picture of the wrapping.. also blue.. hope she likes it.

I'll share what I got soon.. so excited!

Get my post directly in you inbox with Bloglovin
I am now also offering ad space. See Sponsors for more information.

20120820

There we have it, Ramadan has come and gone and it almost flew right by with the exception of a few days when we though it would never end. (Most of us have been fasting even before we hit puberty.. our first fast being around the age of 6 or 7, some even younger) The first day was difficult.. as in I think I might die of starvation. After those first two days things got much better and I was in the mood to cook. M felt that after a long day of fasting dinner should be something special, like a reward.

So we feasted. We added a glass of juice and finished the night with fruit or ice cream.

But as days went on my enthusiasm started to falter. It wasn't the hunger that was my problem is was mainly the lack of caffeine.. so I cooked some days and then days came were I went back to simpler meals and even leftovers camouflaged as new.

By the time we were into week three and especially week four, the finish line was within reach but the lack of sleep was catching up with us and we were just tired. In case you are wondering how sleep has anything to do with fasting.. well. We would wake up at 4am to have something for breakfast.. around 5am we would get up again for morning prayers.. and then the cherry on the sundae was that D would wake up around 6am.

By the time that last few days rolled around food, especially cooking food was the last thing on my mind.. but we enjoyed the yummy food while it lasted.

20120816

When people have children so many stop doing things and going places.. they stop eating out, reading, taking vacations.. when we had D we had decided that we were going to make a greater effort and try to not let that happen to us.. so when he was just a few weeks old we took him to his first restaurant, at six months we took him on his first vacation.. and at 20months we decided it might be time to try his first movie. There were no animated movies playing at the time so we decided to settle for a family movie instead. D was fresh after his afternoon nap, we bought him his favorite, popcorn and we settled in our seat to watch Journey to the Mysterious Island. He was too light to keep the seat down so M had to weigh it down with his knee.. D was ecstatic.. he was laughing and clapping and the movie hadn't even started yet.. long story short he sat still for about the first 20mins before he wanted to leave.. we took turns taking him out but the moment he was outside he wanted to be inside again.. it was an unsuccessful outing.

We tried again at 22months. I wanted to go watch The Hunger Games.. this time we decided to change up our strategy. We decided to wait till it was almost bedtime, this way he'd eat some popcorn and then eventually fall asleep. He is a sound sleeper so we saw no flaws in our plan. We failed yet again. He did not sleep and started to get cranky.. M took him out and drove him around till he did fall asleep and then I held him through the rest of the movie.

You can see by now that we are anything but quitters as well as the fact that we haven't opened up to the idea of a sitter yet.. Last weekend we tried yet again at 25months. We rethought our strategy. This time we were going to take him after he had already gone to sleep and take our umbrella stroller with us so that we didn't have to hold him. This plan sounded fool proof.. as fool proof as a plan involving a toddler could be. He was fed and in his pj's.. went into the car seat asleep.. i got out in front of the cinema to buy tickets and he was still asleep.. the plan was going to work! M parks the car and opens D's side of the door to find a very awake smiling toddler. We had 30mins before the movie would start so I hopped back into the car and we hoped we could drive around till he fell asleep again.. but D had started to giggle.. he was actually giggling in the back seat and saying stop and go at the changing of the signals. It was so annoyingly adorable I wanted to hug him. It was only a few minutes before the movie would start.. we didn't have a choice, we had bought the tickets already. We took him in, awake, sans popcorn and found seats that would make for an easy getaway. 20minutes in and he had drifted off into sweet slumber and we enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises.

We won't be making a habit of this.. it was too stressful. Though we may try again in a few months, when something we really want to watch is playing.

When did you first venture out with your child to the movies? How did it go? What movie did you choose?

20120813

It has happened again.. I have gotten the amazing opportunity to gift another celebrity courtesy of the fabulous Artisan Group. The lucky celebrity is a former Bond Girl and will always be famous for being a Wild Thing.. she is the mother of three beautiful girls and has the most gorgeous hair! Denise Richards.

When I think of Denise Richards one of the first things I see is the beach. It could be because of the numerous bikini shots of her out there.. Keeping in mind my beach inspiration, here are my options

20120806

I have always been a fan of animated movies.. My Little Mermaid, Lion King, Finding Nemo but once you have a kid and you are already watching cartoon all day the last thing you want to do is wind down at the end of the day and watch yet another cartoon.

My mother owns a parrot so when the movie Rio came out she was one of the first people in the theater, dragging my father with her to watch the parrot-tastic flick and she raved about it for days to come. So when I say it was on TV I seized the moment and dvred it immediately. Something to share with D.

The movie is adorable, the colors vibrant, the characters engaging and D is officially hooked. At first he could only sit through the first 20-30 minutes at a time.. then lose interest. But he liked it enough to make me play it more than once a day. Now, he can sit through the entire movie.. wide eyed and mouth open when he isn't acting out bits and pieces and he still insists on watching it multiple times..!

Have you seen Rio? Jesse Eisenberg voices the lead Blu and is perfect as 'the nerd bird'. The cast includes Anne Hathaway, George Lopez, Jamie Fox, Will.I.Am, Tracey Morgan and Leslie Mann just to name a few.

A few of my favorite quotes:

Blu: Not all birds fly! There are ostriches... Jewel: You are NOT an ostrich!